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One fine spring day, way back in 1998... a handful of hepster-wanna-be's talked about how great it'd be to get a band together. One of their roomates, who was currently planning a party, was tired of listening to all their talk and said, "Why don't you just get that damn band together and play at my party!" They all laughed at the idea, then stopped and caught each other's eyes in a sudden bout of serious realization... 2 weeks later, a thrown together show was underway and people liked it... they actually liked us!
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Grinnin' Chessy
Cats-The Early Days
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You know those places you grow up around and think, "Man if I had a band and I played there that would be the highlight of my life!" But really its no big deal... Greg had two of those, and during the summer he made it his goal to have the Chessy Cats play at them. Well it paid off, and the Chessy Cats had two gigs at the end of the summer. One was at a Fair in Greg's hometown, the other an annual Lehigh battle of the bands. |
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Vaughan, Chad, and JP sportin' their new hats at the Fair |
Over this summer, the boys sought a new trumpet player... and found themselves JP Kloske. So word spread that there was a new gang of fine-lookin' young men playing an intense show of this "Swing music" that was just beginning to be noticed. As people started asking, the boys started getting tired of people referin' to them as the CheEsy Cats. Around that time, Brad had an inspirational dream... He awoke in the middle of the night and wrote down this idea... |
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| This idea would become "The Slicked Up 9's"... a newer, more user-friendly name that thousands of fans could enjoy... And so the 9's took this new name with them, spreading the powers of hardcore swing to fraternity parties and functions around the Bethlehem area. As the 9's grew, so did the swing movement on the East Coast. This led to many more opportunities for the boys. |
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Girls Girls Girls... Why does anyone start a band? Dames... Kittens... Chirps... Chicks... Call those precious ladies what you will... its the motivation behind most male musicians... but the 9's were all caught up in the music. They didn't realize what they had goin' for them until the skirts made it obvious for them... They had landed a gig at an all-girls Catholic high school. Is that even legal? Everyone poked fun at Greg for gettin' them this gig at first... but he had the last laughs as the curtain drew and here we sat on stage, a roar of young girls screaming and screeching loud enough for the Beetles on Ed Sullivan. It was a wake-up call... not that 8 guys could now use this thing called the 9's meet the ladies... but that it didn't have to be about Frat parties anymore... we could set goals... and maybe try to meet them. |
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Sharky Sharky categorizes a lot of the adventures of the early days. Sharky, if you don't already know, refers to the 9's original guitarist... Vaughan. Part of his personality was his VW and its many inconsistencies to say the least. It seemed that whether or not we played most of our first gigs depended on when his car decided to work. So we got into a habit that has lasted to this day- get to every gig very early, because something will go wrong- and always has... call it Sharky's law. Lets look at an example.... |
| December 16, 1998. An office Christmas party in Malvern, PA... an exclusive Philly suburb. It was held at Radnor Hunt- a converted mansion. As expected, Sharky's law went into effect early in the evening. Vaughan (also known as Clowny) didn't show at the band's initial rendezous. A couple guys stayed behind to wait... hours passed and no guitarist. So we embarked on our 1 hour trip to the gig. We set up for the gig. No word from our shady, Italian guitarist. Finally we somehow manage to get a message from Vaughan and his car was dead again. Things got complicated, but eventually he made his way down from North Jersey to Philly. When he got directions, he was told that our gig was at a really large house... only Vaughany didn't realize just how many big houses there were in this place. So he got to a house matching the description, grabbed his ax and ran inside looking for the gig. It was a big house, so he ran from room to room to room... finally he came across a half-dozen folks around a table eating. Their mouths dropped and they had no answer when he asked where the gig was. There Sharky was, in his jersey and backwards baseball hat, guitar in hand, in some rich family's dining room... he eventually got to the right house... and later left with a mysterious dead shark in a bottle of water in his possession... thus the legendary name. Just another gig in Vaughany's experience. He kept us on our toes for quite awhile back then. |
To Be Continued...
